Our world is becoming more complex and the future more uncertain. Facing this can be paralyzing and lead to despair. Yet, leadership can be a cure. Leadership rekindles hope. Leadership helps others rise with greater wisdom after they fall (and we all fall). Leadership provides clarity amidst the clutter and confusion.

Our world continues to evolve – greater diversity of Jewish families, growing numbers of disaffected Jews, unparalleled complexity and uncertainty as we look toward the future. Our Jewish congregations and other institutions need to evolve as well. We need to embrace the diversity that is increasingly the hallmark of our time – diversity of identity, experience, perspective, ability, and aspiration. For that diversity is also the strength upon which our continued vitality will rely.

What if leadership is the practice of repairing that which is broken, returning the world to a sense of wholeness?  What if it’s within our ability to do it right now and right here?

Whether you are a synagogue president or a Jewish communal professional, the chair of an agency board or a member of the clergy, you have been called on to lead in a time of crisis for Israel and the Jewish People. You have witnessed members of your community in mourning, heard cries of anguish and anger, and have sensed the tremulous uncertainty of families and friends.

We offer you this simple four-fold framework with the hope that it will provide useful guidance in this complex and challenging time.

Twentieth-century Jewish education was designed to answer the question, “How can we ensure that individuals remain ‘good’ Jews, even as they become good (and successful) Americans” Jewish education must respond to a subtly, but significantly, different question: “How can we help Jews draw on and use their Jewishness to live more meaningful, fulfilling, and responsible lives?”